


Dun

by psalloacappella



Series: Particles [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F the shinobi state, F/M, Multi, Post-War, Team as Family, Treason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26516401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalloacappella/pseuds/psalloacappella
Summary: They reunite at the edge of the world, surrendering to the universe on the dark side of the moon.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Series: Particles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1919686
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	Dun

❦

“We … couldn’t convince them.”

Knuckles, white, clutch the bars; it seems impossible that he could feel her shaking from here, desperate to hang onto reality as the sentence sinks in for them both.

He’d meet her eyes, but they’re the argument and ironic crux of his verdict, so it seems artless. Hers demand his audience, jagged as sea glass, sharp as the crushed remnants of jewels.

In truth, he’s simply been waiting for them to throw on the detritus and dirt, bury him deep so it can all end. Relief — that’s what it could bring.

“Sasuke-kun!”

He expects tears, and they do come, but not without accompanying fury, and to her credit she takes anger out on the bars that cage him, impugn his freedom. The yawn and moan of metal succumbing to her lithe and dangerous hands. 

Good gods, even metal. _Terrifying_. The heaviness of living settling like an old friend in the marrow — even in this familiar, blighted murk, the darkness he dances with and knows, the skirl of air through his nose brings the tiniest note of grim amusement. 

“Those _monsters._ ” It’s a hiss through clenched teeth, and she tastes her own briny tears. “Not fit to carry us after a war; they’ll be the death of us all.”

“Sakura—”

“It’s not right, it’s not _justice_ —”

“Please.”

He finally raises his eyes to her, blackened coal, then glances askew to stare at something else, _anything_ else, even these depressing dust motes floating in the prism of light offered by the small window, because meeting the madness in hers could set them both alight.

“You . . . want this. You’re giving in.” The falter in her voice, some dolorous chord of all the emotions that always undo him — it’s worse than the verdict. It’s gutting, raw.

Silence strings between them, encompassing all that’s treason to speak aloud.

It’s quiet, the reedy scrape of her nails against the bars, the crunch of her fingers tightening. The simmering anger on his behalf is heat he can feel. In the absurdity of his destiny it’s a sound almost religious, promising, sung from the deepest well of salvation so gently given. 

It floats to him now, fil di voce, fluttering in the dark: 

“Come to me.”

The fleeting consideration to disobey comes, then goes; he bends to it like breathing, to her undying adoration — the second in which they laid eyes on one another in the middle of the end of the world, their love reignited with abandon, the fate of steel and flint. 

Flaw, weakness, vice: Where would he be if he’d never left her side? 

Even pressed to the cold bars like this, resigned, a quiet sigh still escapes at the warmth of her. The little he can reach. Her thin fingers in his hair, memorizing his face with the desperation of the blind aching to see. Always, he remembers her lanky, and now all he can wonder is when she softened into gentle curves like this, the warmth of slopes and skin.

It rips through his gut as a knife, the end of hope. He understands now it was this: It was always supposed to be this, them, her. 

“They’re letting me talk to you now, one last time. This is all we get.”

Words raspy, hurried, the tones of spilling secrets. Almost too faint to hear.

“I convinced them to let me see you. I’ll be back tonight — to say goodbye.”

“No,” he hisses, fingers snaking through the bars to pull her against them, hard, as if there were any space between them anyway. “You won’t.”

“I don’t see that you have other choices.”

“Fuck — Sakura—”

“That’s it.” The guard’s voice is cold, tinged with disgust: Ethereal, patriotic healer of men, always pining after a traitor. It stirs the blood, tragic love spun into the songs of bards. “Out of time.”

“Get back, Uchiha,” another one says, nodding to the back wall of the cell.

Sasuke curses under his breath as she hovers in the doorway, listening to her soft sobs mingle with Naruto’s meaningless words of comfort.

She springs him from his cell. With three fallen bodies at the door and skittering whispers of sedition at their feet, he grabs her wrist in a rough way that makes her eyes flash. 

“They’ll torture you. This is treason.”

Nostrils flaring, she rips her arm away. “It’s unconscionable.”

“You’re not thinking straight.”

“Some rules should be broken, Sasuke-kun. You never abided tyranny — why should I?”

“What’s your fucking plan?”

“This is it,” she whispers. “Letting you go. It’s all I want for you.”

“Come, then.”

It spirals, this silence, unraveling the entire world in abandoned strings, piling at their feet.

“Just like this?” Tears hover on her lashes, but don’t fall. “Run away into the new moon? Gods, damn it, if it was any other time . . . ”

Horrid timing, always. It could be romantic in another dimension, another aeon, neither of which they have.

“Since I don’t know what will happen,” she says, swallowing hard to keep from sobbing, “please just . . . make it something nice.”

“No. Not again.” _Not illusions, never again. Not to her._

“So now you decide to be merciful?” She startles, tuned to the impending rumble of a reported jailbreak. 

With no time to argue, never enough time to speak, facing the intolerable love and loss in her expression, his eyelid falls closed and 

opens in color.

She gasps, sways. Seconds masquerade as hours, slipping silent as sand grains, and as he lies her on the dank, cold floor and tucks her arm under her head 

she dreams of flower fields and they tangle, love one another wild, somewhere in the bliss. 

_If you follow — I’m waiting._

Naruto sets her rucksack next to her bed with an uncharacteristic gentleness.

“The only reason they’re not here yet is because of Tsunade-sama.” Kakashi’s voice betrays nothing of her choice, or his opinion of it. Still, his eyes are nebulous, resigned.

“You gotta fight this, Sakura-chan. I’ll fight this,” Naruto says, taking her hand in a desperate plea, a last-ditch effort to convince. “I’ll get him back! Keep him safe!”

Sakura observes the point at which they touch. Fingers sliding from his, easing away from his pain, she offers up that smile that, by now, even Sai knows is meant to misdirect fools.

“They’ve decided. We won’t win this, Naruto.” She closes her eyes, feigns a weakness she doesn’t feel; true to his word, Sasuke had filled her head with tender things. For the benefit of her loved ones' later alibis, she sinks into the pillows with the back of her hand limp and weak on her forehead. “And now I need to sleep. I’m sure you understand.”

With his hands curled into fists, he promises louder than he should.

“Tell him I’m sorry, and I’ll fix it. I’ll rebuild this whole damn world with my bare hands!” His voice cracks, and so does her soul. “I’ll make this home — for both of you.”

If there’s ever a moment in which she wavers, it’s surely this one.

He is where she finds him, and not anywhere else. She follows, so he’s waiting. 

There’s no time for a tearful reunion, a passionate kiss — all they have is a moment to hold hands, intertwining their fingers for fractions of seconds, the only earthly tether. 

Only when they are days and so many miles away, anonymous in a foreign land and drunk on exhaustion,

do they crumble, do 

they tangle, love one another wild, somewhere on the dark side of the moon. 

**Author's Note:**

> I like this premise but haven't fleshed anything out; idk if I can form it, maybe someday, so it goes in the graveyard / limbo / scrapbook!


End file.
